Remembering works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude

This was how it all began: In 1961, Christo wrapped a Volkswagen Beetle with fabric and rope — one of his first works of this kind. The "Wrapped Beetle" was a symbol of the everyday being transformed by art. Christo's signature was already evident here, namely wrapping objects to make them look new and different. The Beetle was the forerunner of his later spectacular large-scale projects.

In the 1960s, Christo also covered public payphones with fabric and string. He thus transformed everyday objects into works of art. The wrapping made the familiar strange and stimulated reflection. These early works show how Christo was already reconfiguring spaces and objects back then — transient, surprising and poetic.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's first large-scale project was "Wrapped Coast" in Australia in 1969, in which an approximately two and a half kilometer long stretch of coastline near Sydney was covered with over 90,000 square meters of fabric and several kilometers of rope. It was the first time that the pair wrapped a natural element on such a large scale — a milestone for their later work.

If you could "wrap" a coastline, what's a large building? Thus, a bold plan was hatched. Christo and Jeanne-Claude had their sights set on the Reichstag in Berlin, a building with an eventful history. It suited their philosophy of making things visible in a different way by covering them up. A good 23 years later, they were able to realize the project in the face of sometimes massive resistance.

The couple also unfurled a bright orange curtain that stretched across a valley in the Rifle Gap State Park, in the US state of Colorado. The cloth was 111 meters (about 365 feet) high and 381 meters long. It fluttered like a giant wave in the wind — a powerful interplay of nature, technology and art. However, after just 28 hours, the "Valley Curtain" had to be dismantled again due to a storm.

Four years later, Christo and Jeanne-Claude created "Running Fence": a 39-kilometer-long (24 mile) fence made of white fabric that stretched across the hills of California to the Pacific Ocean. The work only stood for two weeks, impressively combining landscape, light and movement. It was a poetic play of space and perspective — monumental, yet fleeting.

2025 is not only an anniversary year for Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who were both born on the same day and would have both turned 90 on June 13, 2025. It also marks special anniversaries of their most famous installations. Forty years ago, in 1985, the two wrapped the famous Pont Neuf in Paris with 41,800 square meters of sand-colored polyester fabric and 12 kilometers of rope.

As part of their "The Umbrellas" project in 1991, Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed 1,340 giant blue umbrellas in a valley near Ibaraki in Japan. They also erected 1,760 yellow umbrellas in California — as a joint project on two continents. The umbrellas were each 6 meters high and 8.7 meters wide. The work not only connected the continents, it also brought nature, art and color into harmony.

After the German Bundestag or parliament finally said "yes" to the wrapping of the Reichstag in February 1994, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were finally able to fulfill their dream and gave not only Berliners but the whole world two magical weeks with the wrapped Reichstag. Thirty years ago, millions of visitors came to admire the spectacular art object in Berlin.

The fabric used by the artist duo to cover these trees in Switzerland was very thin and permeable to light and air. Christo and Jeanne-Claude covered 178 trees with around 55,000 square meters of silvery, translucent polyester fabric. The trees looked like floating sculptures, almost magical depending on the light. Once again, it looked like a symbiosis of art and nature.

In 2005, "The Gates" brought 7,500 bright saffron-colored gates to 37 kilometers of park paths. Free-hanging fabric panels in each gate blew up to the next gate in a light breeze. The project that cost $21 million (around €18 million) was wholly financed by the artist couple through the sale of drawings and studies for "The Gates," as well as other works of art.

Not wrapped, yet enchanting — for a brief period. These "gates" were only installed in Central Park for 16 days in February 2005. People enjoyed the illuminated pathways despite the biting New York winter. After they were dismantled, the fabric, which had been manufactured in Germany, was stored and reused for the "Floating Piers" project in Italy 11 years later.

"The Floating Piers" on Lake Iseo in Italy were Christo's first project after the death of his wife in 2009: 3 kilometers of bright yellow piers connected the mainland with two islands. Some 1.2 million visitors flocked to the site, creating chaotic conditions at times. At times, the footbridges even had to be temporarily closed to ensure safety.

The wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe was executed after Christo's death in 2020 by his team — above all by his long-time project manager and nephew, Vladimir Yavachev. It was realized according to his precise instructions — as a posthumous tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, financed as always entirely through the sale of Christo's artworks, without public funds or sponsors.